1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Coppée, Henry

COPPÉE, HENRY (1821–1895), American educationalist and author, was born in Savannah, Georgia, on the 13th of October 1821, of a French family formerly settled in Haiti. He studied at Yale for two years, worked as a civil engineer, graduated at West Point in 1845, served in the Mexican War as a lieutenant and was breveted captain for gallantry at Contreras and Churubusco, was professor of English at West Point from 1850 to 1855 (when he resigned from the army), was professor of English literature and history in the University of Pennsylvania 1855–1866, and on the 1st of April 1866 was chosen first president of Lehigh University. In 1875 he was succeeded by John McD. Leavitt and became professor of history and English literature, but was president pro tem. from the death of Robert A. Lamberton (b. 1824) in September 1893 to his own death in Bethlehem on the 22nd of March 1895. He published elementary text-books of logic (1857), of rhetoric (1859), and of English literature (1872); various manuals of drill; Grant, a Military Biography (1866); General Thomas (1893), in the “Great Commanders” Series; History of the Conquest of Spain by the Arab-Moors (1881); and in 1862 a translation of Marmont’s Esprit des institutions militaires, besides editing the Comte de Paris’s Civil War in America.